The disclosure that dairy herds in Nevada have been infected by a version of the H5N1 bird flu not previously seen in cows, has put virologists and researchers on high alert. Among other things, the news from the Nevada Department of Agriculture, suggests that driving the virus out of the U.S. cattle population won’t be nearly as simple as federal officials once suggested—or perhaps hoped.
On Friday came a second and potentially more serious blow: A technical brief by the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that the genotype, known as D1.1, contains a genetic mutation that may help the virus more easily copy itself in mammals—including humans.
This D1.1 version of the virus is the same variant that killed a man in Louisiana and left a Canadian teen hospitalized in critical condition. It is not the B3.13 genotype widely found in sick cattle dating to early last year.
“This can be of significant concern if this virus continues to spread among cows and infects more people,” immunologist and former federal health official Rick Bright tells Fortune. “This mutation has not been associated with improved human transmission, so there are no telling signs of enhanced spread yet. But when this virus gets into people, it is ready to cause a much more serious disease than the (B3.13) virus that has been circulating in cows before now.
“We have never been closer to a pandemic from this virus,” Bright adds. “And we still are not doing everything possible to prevent it or reduce the impact if it hits.”
The D1.1 genotype has been detected in wild birds in all North American flyways, as well as mammals and poultry, so it isn’t surprising that it’s made the leap to cows. But its newfound presence in the Nevada dairy herds is considered by many virologists to mark a sort of inflection point in the spread of H5N1, and it could spell more trouble for humans going forward.
“Given the fact that D1.1 seems to be more virulent in humans, this could indicate a major change in terms of public health risks from the earlier scenario with the B3.13 strain,” veterinary science pioneer Juergen Richt, Director of the National Institutes of Health Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, tells Fortune.
In response to an emailed series of questions, a spokesperson for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the agency still deems the risk to human health for the general public to be low. “However, people with close, prolonged, or unprotected exposures to infected birds or other animals (including livestock), or to environments contaminated by infected birds or other animals, are at greater risk of infection,” the spokesperson said.
The USDA on Friday noted that although the Nevada cattle did not display clinical signs of infection prior to its detection via testing, such signs have since been reported, along with die-offs of a large number of wild birds near the affected dairies.
Should humans be taking more precautions? What is the scope of the risk? And are there mitigating actions that should already be in place on America’s farms and dairies?
The urgency of those questions suggests that in the coming weeks, an absolute premium should be placed upon the timely dissemination of information and testing updates from the federal sources upon which researchers and health officials often rely. But that information flow is no longer to be taken for granted.
On Jan. 21, under orders from the Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) placed a freeze on almost all external communications, including documents and health guidance, until a Trump-appointed official could be installed and approve them. Such a move is not unprecedented, but when the information freeze blew past its Feb. 1 deadline without being fully lifted, Democratic leaders began crying foul.
One important casualty of that action was the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The MMWR, as it’s known, is a critical source of information on public health issues. The MMWR failed to publish for the first time in more than sixty years on January 23rd and again on January 30th. Publication did resume on February 6th, but there was no mention of bird flu nor any information about the three H5N1 studies which were scheduled to be published in January according to the Washington Post.
Further, per the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is reportedly planning to eliminate the jobs of thousands of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) employees. Senior public-health officials are reportedly being told to rank employees based on how critical their roles are.
Depending upon where those cuts land across the various agencies of the department, practices like tracing bird-flu outbreaks and approving new drugs could be affected. And Trump’s nominee to run HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in 2023 said he’d tell federal health scientists, “Thank you for your public service. We’re going to give [studying] infectious diseases a break for about eight years.”
These developments have ramped up the concern of scientists and researchers tracking the spread of H5N1, which, according to the CDC, has now infected 959 dairy herds in the U.S. and been responsible for the death of 156 million poultry, sending the price of eggs to record highs because of scarce supply.
Researchers are also loudly asking whether dairy workers should be vaccinated using existing supplies from the federal stock of bird flu vaccine, and whether personal protective equipment should become mandatory on dairy farms and egg-laying facilities for frontline workers.
This all comes back to the timely flow of information and communication—and, experts say, it is being throttled at a critical moment.
“This is chilling but not at all surprising, given the gag put on scientists and the manipulation of scientific communication in 2020 at the start of the COVID pandemic,” says Bright, a vaccine researcher who filed a whistleblower complaint against the Trump administration in 2020 and has been urging health officials for months to ramp up testing and precautions around bird flu.
“When it happened in 2020,” Bright says, “it slowed the response, sowed distrust in science and public health, and as a consequence many more people died during that time. It is horrifying that lessons were not learned, and we find ourselves in the same or worse situation–not only on H5N1, but on numerous ongoing outbreaks in the U.S.”
Website: International Conference on Infectious Diseases
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